NewsBits is database news, developer news, cloud news and some curiosities from the IT world. Set the controls for the heart of the NewsBits!

Database Bits

Elastic 5.0.0 RC - Elastic, the people behind Elasticsearch have released the first release candidate of Elastic Stack 5.0. This, of course, include Elasticsearch 5.0 RC1 with numerous new features, much new architecture and a migration process which starts with testing plugins for the current Elasticsearch 2.4.x and the prospect of reindexing for older databases. It's arrived with RC1's for Kibana 5.0, which is now less the CSV import feature of earlier pre-releases, LogStash 5.0 and Beats 5.0.

VoltDB and Jepsen - The Jepsen tests, created by Kyle Kingsbury, are some of the best repeatable tests around from checking distributed databases keep their promises. Now, VoltDB has announced that its database has passed Jepsen testing. Interestingly, and we believe this is a first time, the VoltDB developers have now integrated Jepsen into their continuous integration process. VoltDB is the latest database with Michael Stonebraker behind it and he has been influential in the development of the modern database.

MySQL and npm - It is still in development, but the latest development milestone of MySQL Connector/Node.JS has appeared on npmjs. This connector is all about leveraging the X Protocol for MySQL and is built to work with relational tables and JSON document collections at the same time. There's more about XDevAPI in the MySQL documentation.

MySQL and Pinterest - An interesting article on MySQL compression came out of Pintrest's engineering group which turned to implementing their own column compression system to counter the bloat of JSON keys in their database - each of their Pin's is 1.2K of JSON and they have 75 billion of them. They combined an existing patch with a predefined compression dictionary based on a Pin's BLOB to push up to 66% space savings. A promised follow up article will talk about how they ramped up the compression with a smarter dictionary. The column compression is apparently available in Percona MySQL 5.6.

MySQL and AirBnB - Talking MySQL, the folks at AirBnB talked horizontal scaling in a recent blog article. They looked at how their MySQL database's were likely to hit a C10K problem as the engine allocated a thread per connection and mitigation stratagies were not cutting it. The solution, proxies in a discoverable layer offering web servers access to services they want without transferring the client load straight over onto their databases. Which all goes to show sometimes the solution to scaling problems can be found away from the database.

Development Bits

Node 6 and LTS - The Node 6 branch of Node.js has reached a milestone as Node v6.9.0 was declared LTS. It was promptly followed by its first update, Node 6.9.1 LTS which resolved a regression. The important part though is that there is now a LTS edition of Node 6 which will be supported well into 2019. The same LTS Roadmap is a good reminder that Node 0.10 LTS support ends at the end of this month and 0.12 LTS support ends at the end of this year. If you have old Node apps around, you may want to get to planning updating things.

Java 9 - Looking forward to Java 9? There's a lot of cool stuff planned for it - HTTP2 client, HTML5 Javadoc with search, Linux AArch64 port, Unicode 7 and 8, bad security features disabled and much more - there's some up in the air still with Ahead-of-time compilation still proposed at least till 26th of this month. So the newly confirmed timetable sees final availability of Java 9 coming 27th July 2017.

JS Foundation - The new JS Foundation is another umbrella under the Linux Foundation umbrella of trade associations. The JS Foundation is setting itself up as a 'center of gravity' for the JavaScript ecosystem and becoming at least a partner for a number of projects. The Node-RED, project – the web-based drag-and-drop development environment that started life as an IBM project – is one of the projects being drawn into the foundation though what practical effect that will have is currently unclear. An open governance framework for all projects and mentorship appear to be on the cards for all the projects - that also includes jQuery, Lodash, Grunt and Dojo.

Other Bits

Facebook Devices - Looking for imagery to illustrate your network of devices? Check out Facebook's collection of devices which has watches, phones, tablets, computers and more in bitmap and sketch file formats. There's no license on these images but Facebook have got a disclaimer reminding people that the you can't go use the images and brands without permission. Ask a lawyer or someone who plays one on TV.

Floppy Music - Take a bunch of floppy drives, scanners and other noisesome devices from the 90s dubbed the Floppotron and, of course you are going to render Haddaway's "What is Love" in the din. The creators also make use of other sound sources as their Seven Nation Army shows.

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Dj Walker-Morgan is Compose's resident Content Curator, and has been both a developer and writer since Apples came in II flavors and Commodores had Pets. Love this article? Head over to Dj Walker-Morgan’s author page to keep reading.